


Only Me Beside You

by biextroverts



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 04:16:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11661441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biextroverts/pseuds/biextroverts
Summary: Siobhan Sadler and Gracie Rollins meet again at the way station on the path to the afterlife.





	Only Me Beside You

**Author's Note:**

> I have emotions about the deaths of Siobhan Sadler and Gracie Rollins, and also about the mother-daughter dynamic they were developing in the one and only episode in which they actually interacted. This is both of those things combined.
> 
> Title is from "No One Is Alone" from Into the Woods (which is a really appropriate musical for OB in general now that I think about it).

          Siobhan reaches the end of the road and emerges into what might as well be nothingness – an endless haze of silver-gray fog, with an endless expanse of perfect, smooth gray concrete beneath her feet, like the floor of a parking garage newly poured. The only thing she can see, besides the endless sweep of gray, is a small, huddled figure some fifty meters away from where she stands. She moves towards it.

  
          The figure is a woman, she sees when she comes close, kneeling, bent over, and sobbing. The figure's small, skinny frame fairly swims in her nondescript dark clothes, but the hood of her jacket is down, and that waist-length waterfall of flame-red hair is unmistakable. “Gracie?” S says, like a woman speaking to some small creature who just might run away at the slightest perceived provocation. She crouches a little.

          Gracie looks up over her shoulder at S, sobs ceasing instantly. Recognition flares bright in her eyes, and S can feel her own name on the tip of Gracie's tongue. “Shhh -Siobhan?” Gracie manages, still sniffling a little.

          S nods. She kneels, and reaches out to put a hand on Gracie's shoulder, resting it firmly there when Gracie doesn't draw away at her approach. “What happened, love?” S says after a moment, searching Gracie's face for some clue.

         “I – I –” Gracie's sniffling intensifies, and a tear falls from one eye and rolls down her cheek, the precursor to a new round of wracking sobs.

        S's grip on Gracie's shoulder tightens, and, almost subconsciously, she begins to knead the bowstring-tense muscle there with her fingertips and the heel of her palm, the way she always did for Sarah, before Sarah stopped letting her, and for Felix, and for Kira, over the years, whenever they were stressed. Gracie winces at the pressure, and tenses even more, but, after a moment to adjust to the weight and force of S's hand, emits a low grunt of pleasure at the relief of the pain and tightness her body has built up. She takes a deep, slightly shuddering breath, and continues.

         “I went to find Helena,” she tells S, who brings her other hand up to Gracie's other shoulder and begins to knead that one as well. “They told me – they told us that if I found her, if I captured her, they'd give Mark the cure. For the Castor illness. I tracked her down to the convent where she was staying, and I called them, and then … I – I couldn't turn her in. She's family to me. But they traced my phone, and they found us, and they cornered us, and there was a woman with a gun – she held it to my head and pulled the trigger and … she shot me, I don't remember anything else.” She's worked herself back up, now, and her whole body is trembling; her shoulders shudder beneath S's calloused palms. Tears drip from her puffy red eyes and past the equally red tip of her nose, trailing over her still-damp cheeks

         S tightens her grip on Gracie's shoulders with nearly still hands, though she continues to rub small circles with her fingers near Gracie's clavicle. “Shh, love,” she murmurs. “Shh. You're all right now, chicken. You're all right.” She begins to hum, an old Irish lullaby about a young lover's death in battle, which is soothing without the words to accompany the melody, and Gracie's lamentation subsides. S sits, pulling Gracie's head into her lap, and Gracie curls up in fetal at S's side, still shivering slightly. S runs her fingers through the fiery tendrils of Gracie's hair and hums softly, barely more than breath, until Gracie is quiet and still as the dead appear in the land of the living in her lap. She tucks a strand of hair behind Gracie's ear.

          “What about you?” Gracie asks, her voice dull but not deceased. “How did you … what brought you here?”

          “Ferdinand,” S says. She snorts derisively. Gracie turns her head to look at S, eyebrows raised and knit together in question. “Rachel's hired gun,” S explains. “Gets off on torturing women. We got our hands on some files he wanted, and he broke into my home trying to get them back. Shot me in the heart.” Her lips turn up into a slight, but proud, smile, and she lifts her chin a little. “Got him in the throat before I died, though. That should help Sarah and her sisters out, I should think.”

          Gracie's eyes are wide and dark and twitchy, nervous. The way she's looking at S is the same way Felix looked before he told her he was gay, the same way Sarah looked before she told her she was pregnant. It is the look of desperately wanting to let one's concerns loose, but of being terrified of the response one might receive if one confesses. S can feel Gracie's rapid heartbeat fluttering against her leg.

         Gracie swallows, hard, before she speaks. “Is Helena okay? Did you see her? Do you know if they took her? What they want to do is –” Gracie takes a sharp inhale to collect her thoughts, her watery eyes. “Is she safe, do you know?”

          S shakes her head. Her own eyes threaten to brim over with tears. “I don't know, love. I didn't see her.”

          “What about Mark? Is he okay? Did they – has he – I don't know how long it's been, since I was shot, or whether he would have – what he would have – whether they'd – if he'd end up with you, somehow, or contact you, if he was safe.”

          “I don't know, love,” S repeats, heart threatening to rend in two because that's the only answer she has to give.

         Gracie begins to cry freely again, and S strokes her hair and shushes her gently. Her free hand rests on Gracie's stomach, and she begins to rock them both back and forth slightly, as she would with a colicky baby. When Gracie's tears stop once more, she glances up at S.

          “If we're dead, where do we go from here? Is there a … heaven, or?”

          S almost chuckles, but she remembers how unwavering Art told her Helena had said Gracie's faith used to be, and it sobers her, to hear the doubt in Gracie's voice now. “I don't know, love,” she says again. “Whether it's heaven or not, though, I expect there's something more than this.” She does chuckle, now. She was never sure, in life, what she believed about what did or didn't follow death, but clearly there's some sort of afterlife; she's here, after all, and didn't Sarah and Cosima say they saw it, too?

          “When will we go there?”

          “I don't know.”

          They sit in silence for a while, the two of them. Gracie closes her eyes and rests, not quite asleep, in S's lap, and S watches her, running her fingers through Gracie's hair again and again. This wouldn't be so bad, even if this were all there was, S thinks, though there are so many others departed who she wants to see: John, and her mother, and Terry. She could live with this, or well, could not live with this, with this peace and quiet and calm and her fingers running through hair that curls the same was as Sarah's or Kira's.

          “Grace. Siobhan.”

          S and Gracie look up at the sound of the voice. Where once there was only an endless expanse of gray, the same as in any other direction in this place, there now shines a low yellow glow, like the headlights of a train in a dark tunnel. Over S and Gracie stands a woman who looks almost too much like Sarah to bear – identical, except for the tank top and athletic shorts she wears, and the way her hair is pulled back from her face in a jogger's ponytail. She smiles slightly.

          “Beth Childs, I presume?” S says.

          The woman – Beth's – lips curl up another fraction of an inch. “The one and only,” she says. “I'm sorry your mother couldn't make it here to greet you, or your husband. Grace …”

          “There's no one else you could have sent,” Gracie says. She offers Beth a weak smile. ”I never want to see my parents again.”

          Beth nods.

          “You're here to take us onward, then?” S asks Beth, who knits her eyebrows. “To whatever's next?”

          “The Beyond,” Beth nods. “Yeah.”

          Gracie clutches at S's wrists, curling more tightly into herself.

          “You'll be able to see the people you love from there,” Beth says. “Keep an eye on the living.” She bends down, puts one hand on S's shoulder and the other on Gracie's hip. “I'm not going to make you come, Gracie, but I think you'll prefer it there. It's like … home. Whatever that means to you.”

          S takes Gracie's shoulders and helps Gracie lift her body from S's lap. “Come on, chicken,” she says, standing and reaching out a hand to Gracie, who accepts it, and hauls herself up. She clutches S's hand like S is her mother and they're crossing a busy street, and S smiles down at her, and Gracie smiles tentatively back up. S takes a deep breath of the cool, fresh fog, and nods at Beth. "Let's go home."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments because I live for feedback!


End file.
